A well looked forward to multiplayer dinosaur game, has suddenly had it's development stopped according to lead artist Vlad. The Stomping Land is a multiplayer video game that is currently in early access on Steam. The game can be summed up as "DayZ with Dinosaurs" as it has similar gameplay and survival needs; with the main change being that huge dinosaurs roam the land in lush jungle environments.
Developer Supercrit of which is being headed by Alex Fundora, has gone silent with no game updates for an entire month. Users took to the forum only to see a thread written by the least artist; Vlad. The post reads as follows:
"Hello everybody!
I'm sad to say this but I have to temporarily freeze all my work for TLS project. More than a month has passed since the day when I received the last reply from Jig. I've sent him 5 messages and haven't got any single reply. I don't know, probably he has some serious reasons to ignore me (and whole community) but to my mind there are no excuses for such behavior. Not to mention the fact that Jig owes me the money for the latest model, he's put me in a very difficult situation because now I will have to pay our texture artist for his work from my own pocket.
If this silence continues I will stop my participation in TSL and start taking the necessary measures to cover my expenses (sell the models for example)."
- Lead Artist "Vlad" - http://thestompingland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7156
After having raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter, the development of The Stomping Land has seemingly stopped; leaving donors with an unfinished game. It's a real shame as this game looked to be a very promising game with a very unique feature it. An open world dinosaur game has long been requested by gamers; backed by some great developers such as "Vlad". It's a real shame that Vlad will have to pay out from his own pocket to their texture artist, as work cannot go unpaid.
The decision by Vlad came as a result of having heard no word whatsoever from Alex, and as such the need to cover his own expenses has arisen. Vlad has already announced that he will be moving onto other projects, and that the development of The Stomping Land has ceased.
It can only be assumed that the crowd-funded money has been pocketed by Fundora, and as a result donors are furious. One person who donated $90 has informed Kickstarter of the issue. However Kickstarter could only issue an apology in return. It is unknown if Kickstarter will or can take any action.
Real shame that Kickstarter is being abused like this; the only thing this does is harm the game development community. Many indie companies would like to depend on Kickstarter to kick-start the development of their game, so they can break into the industry and eventually self-sustain themselves. Now that events like these are becoming ever so common, the support of kind donors will only go down
"This game has kinda ruined backing projects/early access games on Steam for me." one Steam user said, I don't blame you buddy.
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